


Happy

by Calais_Reno



Series: Just Johnlock [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Don’t copy to another site, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 09:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20374483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: What he's really trying to solve is himself.





	Happy

“I’m running a bit late,” John tells the receptionist at the surgery. “Sorry, it’s just…”

“No problem,” Jenny reassures him. “Dr Sloane’s first patient just cancelled. I’ll have him cover for you until you can get here.”

He thanks her, then looks at his daughter, who is picking up Cheerios daintily, frowning at each one before placing it in her mouth.

“No rush,” he tells her. “We’ve been granted a reprieve.”

Rosie looks up, still serious, and says, “Da.” Something in her expression reminds him of Sherlock. She points at him imperiously. “Da.”

“That’s me,” he says. It’s been her first and only word for a while now, and he sometimes despairs of her ever learning another one. He did a rotation in paediatrics when he was in medical school, and one thing he remembers is how parents worry about all the wrong things. They worry that their child is not doing things early enough— walking, talking, using a spoon, stacking rings in the right order. They worry about vaccinations, weight charts, and when they should start nursery school.

He worries because his daughter doesn’t have a mother, and he isn’t sure he’s a good enough father. Right now, there isn’t much he’s doing well.

She picks up her sippy cup and turns it over, watching the juice fill her tray. Fortunately, there isn’t much juice left. She pushes each piece of cereal with her index finger, testing the level of squishiness, perhaps. Absorbed by this task, she lets the cup drop.

“My little scientist,” he says. “Are we ready?”

“Da,” she announces and pounds on the tray.

He wipes her hands and face, puts on her jacket, and hoists her onto his hip.

She’s a good traveler, a small blessing that fills him with gratitude. Children often scream on the train, toddlers try to escape from their mums, refusing to stay still. With Rosie sitting quietly on his lap, looking around at the other passengers, he feels a bit smug that his child is so well-behaved, though he hardly knows why he should take credit for her behaviour. She has her moments, like when they go to Tesco, or when they get home late and she’s too exhausted to eat her dinner, decides to throw it instead. He imagines that the movement of the train is calming in the morning. Coming home might be another story.

At the day nursery, she waves goodbye to him and toddles over to knock down a tower of blocks another child has been stacking. As he leaves, he hears shrieks. They’re not Rosie’s, so he keeps going.

He walks to the surgery, preferring it to the bus. When he returned from Afghanistan, he walked almost everywhere, not only because of the cost of an Oyster card. Whenever he rode on buses and trains, he felt panic begin to rise from his gut into his chest, and it was all he could do not to flee, scream, or fight. Before it went that far, he would pull the bell, get off, and walk. Cabs didn’t bother him, but he had no money for cabs. He walked.

His panic didn’t make sense to him at the time. He was never nervous about public transport before the army. He’d been shot in Afghanistan, but that was in a desert. No buses, no trains.

It was Sherlock who solved the mystery. “No escape route,” he said. And that was it, he realised. It was the same reason he always looked around for a seat facing the door, wherever he was.

He thanks Sloane for taking his first patient, gets a cup of coffee and goes to his office, where he sits and looks over the list of patients he’ll be seeing today. Piles, rashes, allergies, sports exams. Nothing interesting, nothing more than a two or a three, according to the Holmes rating system.

In a reflective mood, he listens to his patients describe their symptoms, calmly reassures them and answers their questions. At the same time, he’s not just trying to solve them; he’s looking at each of them as a life. They get up and go to work, eat lunch with colleagues, come home tired. Most of them seem content. A doctor’s appointment is an interruption for them, not usually a welcome one. He tries to make it less stressful. A few have chronic problems that bring them back to the clinic over and over, but they manage to return his smiles and laugh at his little jokes. When the surgery has a full agenda, the staff complain a bit that he doesn’t move patients through quickly enough, but he needs this, the small reward of seeing how he’s made things better. If he can solve one problem, however trivial, it all seems worthwhile.

What he’s really trying to solve is himself.

He’s eating a sandwich at his desk, checking his email, when his mobile rings. _Harry Watson._

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear brother…” She holds the note, then gives up singing. “Forty years. How does it feel to join the ranks of the aged?”

“It would be much more horrifying if I were the only one ageing,” he says. “Thank god, I’ve always had you to lead the way, dear sister.”

“Ta for that. How are you? How’s my niece?”

“We’re fine.”

“How’s Sherlock?”

“He’s fine.” He tries to think of something to say. Maybe Sherlock will call, but probably not. He doesn’t do birthdays.

She is silent for a moment. “I was going to send you a singing telegram. You know, one of those people who dress up like a stripper or Elvis or somebody and embarrass you by singing in front of all your colleagues.”

“I’m so disappointed.”

“Yeah, sure you are— but do you know how much those things cost? I’ll take you out for a pint sometime instead.”

“Are you…?”

“I’m fine.” She huffs a bit. “Yes, I’m drinking. There’s this new program I joined. Moderation, not abstinence. It’s like being on a diet. There’s certain things I have to do if I want to have a drink. Vitamins. Glasses of water. And exercise— I bought a bicycle and ride it to work every day. Can you imagine?” She giggles. “Remember when we were kids, racing our bikes to school?”

“You always won,” he says. “Longer legs.”

“You’d beat me now.”

He remembers how Harry gloated every day, leaning against the wall of the school, breathing hard, but trying to pretend she’d been waiting for hours for him to catch up. He’d ride up, peddling as fast as he could, hot, sweaty, and resenting her for asking every fucking day, _what took you so long?_ It was only years later that he realised that was the only moment of the day when she felt superior. In every other way, school was punishment for her.

“Maybe.” He tries to think of something else to say, but this is really more than they have talked in a year. “Listen, thanks for calling.”

“You’re at work,” she says. “I won’t keep you. Let’s get that pint some time.”

There is a cake in the staff room. Not something he’d been expecting, but somebody knew. Well, having a birthday isn’t a secret. Whoever was planning this event, though, has decided it would be fun to have black cups, napkins, and plates. The banner says, _You’re not old, you’re vintage. _They’ve blown up his staff photo and drawn a Victorian moustache on it. They give him a coffee mug showing a speed limit sign: 40 in a red circle. On the other side it says _Reduce Speed Now._

They sing, he thanks everybody, they eat cake, and they all go back to work. This is the template for staff birthdays.

He looks in his satchel for the pills he carries. Four left. He should get a refill, but he isn’t sure what they’re doing for him. Getting a refill will involve going to a colleague, having a ten minute conversation. Everybody takes pills these days, and SSRIs are one of the most commonly prescribed. Not addictive. Maybe he’ll scale down, see how he feels. He takes one, drinks a glass of water.

At about three, the student physicals begin. He’s busy until six, talking to kids and listening to their hearts and lungs, testing their reflexes.

It’s a busy day, a routine he knows. He remembers being in the army, long days of waiting and inactivity, followed by pandaemonium and chaos. He has order now, not chaos, and ought to be glad for that, he supposes. A battlefield is an odd place to feel nostalgic about. When you’re there, though, you feel every moment of your life. It doesn’t matter if you’re happy; if you can think about life, you’re still alive.

On the train going home, Rosie is restless and cranky. Finally, she sits propped in his lap, her thumb in her mouth, casting malevolent looks at the other passengers. A woman across from them smiles. It’s not exactly an invitation, but it is interesting. No doubt she sees that he’s not wearing a ring, and that stimulates some kind of flirting instinct in her. But she’s much too young. Sherlock would take one look at her and say something like, _just had a row with her boyfriend, who’s just admitted to flirting with his secretary; looking for something she can throw in his face. _

He doesn’t have energy for that.

Dinner consists of things Rosie can pick up with her fingers. She decided months ago that jarred food is an abomination. It was a little jar of squash that tipped that balance. He had just slipped a spoonful into her mouth, chasing a spoonful of applesauce, when the phone rang. As soon as he picked up the call, she started screaming. It was only a sales call, so he hung up. The only reason he picked up at all was because hardly anyone ever calls him anymore.

And that was the end of squash. After that, she even turned against applesauce, which she used to adore. He knew there were rules about introducing new foods one at a time so as to watch for allergic reactions, but he was too tired to care. He gave her some of his cooked peas (though she refused the jarred ones) and cut up bits of hamburger. She began to pick them up, examine each piece, and put it in her mouth, gumming it.

She’s almost as picky as Sherlock, he thinks.

Tonight he makes scrambled eggs and toast.

After she’s eaten, he thinks about giving her a bath. He has no reason to be this tired, but he is. He takes off her clothing, now covered in crumbs and jam, and looks for a new box of nappies. The tapes on her nappy are loose from when he checked earlier. Maybe she’s ready for potty training, but he doubts it. Given her temperament, it will need to be her idea, not his, in order to succeed.

Now she strips the nappy off and runs from him, giggling and happily naked.

He follows her into the bathroom, where she has decided a bath is going to happen.

“Da!” she demands, reaching for the bubble soap.

He grabs her before she falls into the tub. “I’m getting old, Rosebug,” he says. “Did you know your dad is old?”

Getting old is not something he thinks about every day. He does think about Rosie. In another five years, she’ll be in school. In ten years, she’ll ride a bike to school and want to stay over at a friend’s house. In fifteen, she’ll stop telling him things and slam her door when he asks. In twenty, she will have left him.It will go by quickly, he knows, however slow his days seem now. However many times he has to wipe her nose and change her nappy, there will come a day when he won’t do those things anymore. There are days when he can hardly wait.

He remembers a night soon after Mary died. Rosie was colicky and wouldn’t stop screaming. He’d checked her ears, felt her belly, changed her nappy, and even gave her a small dose of paracetamol. Still, she cried, and he didn’t know what else to do. He walked the floor with her, singing quietly, bouncing her gently. He tried all the things he had ever advised parents to do for colic. Nothing worked.

It was the middle of the night and it was just him, exhausted and holding a screaming baby. 

And he remembers telling himself, _she’ll grow up soon, much sooner than I expect. One day I’ll look back on this year and only remember her first smiles, her first words, the first time she crawls, stands, walks. I won’t remember nights like these. I’ll remember being happy._

He checks the temperature and squeezes soap into the running water. Rosie crows and bounces up and down, watching the bubbles rise.

She falls asleep without much struggle after the bath. Once she’s in bed, he sits, looking at the telly. He doesn’t turn it on, but staring at the screen provides a neutral focus for his thoughts. He pours a drink, takes a sip.

It isn’t about a number, about being older. That’s just another signpost, a marker on the road. When he was in school, he thought he’d be an adult at twenty. Then he figured thirty was when wisdom would happen. Another ten years, and he’s still waiting.

He ought to have figured things out by now.

He’s come to accept that happiness isn’t the kind of goal that comes with a checklist. Maybe happiness isn’t even a goal; it’s just a byproduct. Progress isn’t what he looks for; he accepts maintenance. He wants to get through each day and not worry about the next one until the sun rises. He stays busy, substituting the daily hustle for happiness. Maybe someday he will look back and realise it was all fine.

But it isn’t enough. And it isn’t solving anything. He imagines Rosie growing up, himself alone again. He imagines going to retirement parties, birthdays, weddings, funerals.

He hasn’t figured anything out.

Sherlock said, _the offer stands_.

He has avoided making a decision.

But time doesn’t wait. Even on a treadmill, going nowhere, time moves on. It’s the longest distance between two places.

It’s the distance between here and Baker Street.

When he asks himself what his heart’s desire is, he knows what he wants. He doesn’t understand why his heart wants this, but he doesn’t have to think about it; he simply knows it does.

_The offer stands._

He’s another year older, and it’s late.

He hasn’t talked to Sherlock in months. It wasn’t the way he thought things would happen, fewer and fewer conversations, the time stretching out between them, until there was silence.

He wants to talk to Sherlock. But he can’t simply call— he should text.

He looks at his phone. It’s too late to call Mrs Nolan, who watches Rosie sometimes. Too late to call anyone.

Too late.

He has a life full of responsibilities and little joy. It’s selfish to want more.

He married, he has a child, his wife is dead, and it’s up to him to make it work. _You chose her._

Once, he was happy.

Happiness is irrelevant.

And he knows. He knows it wouldn’t work. His heart wants, but he doesn’t see how it can work. There are reasons. He’s thought them all out.

He isn’t drowning, he’s just slowly dying. That’s his responsibility, to slowly die and make sure he hasn’t left another mess for people to clean up. He chose this.

He thinks of his old bedsit, the grey room where his despair kept him from seeing the way out. No escape, he’d thought. Die slowly, or die quickly.

Instead, he’d found joy. He remembers how that felt, living with a genius, running after him in the dark, gun tucked in his waistband.

Joy never lasts. He’d grieved for two years.

He keeps himself from feeling anything— _anything—_ rather than experience that again.

Even so, he continues to grieve.

He is tired of trying so hard.

He’s tired of being alone.

_The offer stands. _

He gets a cab. Rosie is quiet, accepting it as normal that her father would get her dressed in the middle of the night and take her for a ride.

An impulse, not a decision.

It’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done. More ridiculous than running across rooftops and jumping across gaps between buildings, more ridiculous even than invading Afghanistan.

It’s after midnight, going on one o’clock.

They stand outside of 221B for several minutes. Still sleepy, Rosie lays her head on his shoulder. There is light in the window. He watches, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dark head.

He hasn’t called or texted. Several horrifying possibilities suddenly occur to him.

Sherlock may have a new flatmate.

Sherlock may have a… someone.

He has those feelings, John knows. He said it all those months ago.

Sherlock may have changed his mind.

_The offer stands._

Why would he wait for John? It’s been months.

He should think of what he will say. No words come to mind.

Rosie makes a little snuffle against his neck. He still has his key, uses it to go inside.

As he walks up the stairs, she lifts her head and looks around with sleepy eyes. She wouldn’t remember this place. It’s been too long. _Too late._

_This is a spectacularly bad idea_, he thinks. He should just turn around, go out that door, find a cab, and go back to his safe, boring life.

But he is a danger junkie still, and realising this, wonders why it took him so long.

He knocks. Hears silence, then footsteps approach the door.

When the door opens, it’s Sherlock. He’s in his dressing gown, his hair mussed, his eyes prepared for something else. Maybe expecting someone else.

They study one another for a long moment. Sherlock is the same, but different, and he assumes that he is different as well. He wonders what those grey eyes are seeing.

“I don’t… know how to do this.” His voice shakes.

Sherlock’s gaze softens. “John. Please come in.”

He stays in the hallway, not crossing the threshold. “I need… You said…”

He clings to Rosie, who is watching Sherlock with curiosity. “Ba,” she says, pointing at him.

Smiling, Sherlock takes her from John’s arms. “Hi, Rosebug.” His smile is fond, and John remembers how surprised he was to learn that Sherlock has a way with babies.

“You said…” he begins again. “Your offer…”

“Still stands,” says Sherlock. His gaze meets John’s with steadiness.

“I don’t know how to do this.” Wretchedness and joy collide somewhere in his chest. “I don’t know what I can give you.”

“However much or little you want.” Sherlock holds out his free hand.

John takes it and is drawn over the threshold, into a place that used to be home. 

“It won’t be easy,” he says, brushing tears from his eyes. “It can never be… what it might have been.”

“It will be what it will be,” says Sherlock. He settles into his chair, Rosie still in his lap. She is staring up at his face.

“Da,” she says, pointing at John.

Sherlock smiles. “Yes, that’s Daddy.”

“You don’t know,” John says. He feels his whole body beginning to tremble, as if everything he’s been holding inside is about to come loose. “Babies get cranky. They need to eat and sleep at regular hours. They make messes and have tantrums.”

“It’s all right John. We don’t have to be sure about everything. Even idiots have children, and we are not idiots. Babies are quite forgiving.”

Rosie is struggling to get out of Sherlock’s lap. John makes a quick survey of the floor and nods at him. Once down, she climbs into John’s old chair, picks up the chemistry book lying there and pretends to read.

Sherlock rises and comes to where he is standing, uncertain.

“May I?”

John nods, and Sherlock’s arms go around him.

“You waited,” John whispers. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

“I told you. There’s only you.”

“I forgave you everything,” he says. “I just…”

“You couldn’t forgive yourself.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sherlock holds him and he feels all the regret inside of him rise to the surface like bubbles, dissolving into air. He lets go, feels all the fight go out of him. Sherlock kisses the tears that are sliding down his face.

“Happy Birthday, John.”


End file.
